Next stop: South(ern) Africa!

South Africa - with 95% of the regional funding raised since 2019 - dominates Africa's 3rd largest region in terms of start-up fundraising

Following our coverage of Eastern, Northern and Western Africa - and after a quick break to celebrate H1 results ($3bn+ 🥳) - we’re off to Southern Africa this week. Southern Africa represents 17% of all the funding raised by start-ups in Africa since 2019, which puts it in third position behind its Western and Eastern cousins. This share is slightly lower this year so far (14%) than in 2021 (22%) and 2020 (19%), but with 6 months to go until the end of 2022, it is just too early to say whether this is a trend or not. Now, when we’re talking about Southern Africa, we’re really talking about South Africa: with $1.7bn+ raised since 2019, it represents over 95% of the funding raised by start-ups in the region. In the past three years, funding raised by start-ups in South Africa has displayed strong and steady growth: x3.7 between 2019 and 2020, and x3.1 between 2020 and 2021. In the first half of 2022 so far, the numbers pretty much match those of last year ($394m in H1 2021; $392m in H1 2022; -1% YoY). No other market can really compete with South Africa at this stage. Indeed, the second country in terms of funding is Zambia though with 46x times less funding raised ($37m) through 22x times less $100k+ deals (12 vs. 263+). Namibia and Zimbabwe come next, but no other market than Zambia can claim more than ten $100k+ deals since 2019. All in all, as we’ve seen with other regions, it is tough to grow in a giant’s shadow… but it’s even tougher in Southern Africa.

Factor[e] have launched a venture studio based in Kenya that invests $1m to build new companies from scratch in energy, mobility and agriculture with African and female co-founders. They’re looking for sector advisors and co-founder recommendations. Successful co-founder referrals will be offered a roundtrip ticket anywhere in the world!

Thank you very much for joining us on this tour of Africa’s key regions in terms of start-up fundraising, which is now almost complete (except for Central Africa which we will cover soon; the numbers there are still much more modest though). If you’d like more details, or if you prefer to look at a different geographical cut of the data, as always you can access our deals database with a discount. A bientôt!